Jazz Manouche at L’Atelier Charonne

…But now, I am where I dreamed I would be: L’atelier Charonne. Tonight is Jazz Manouche Piano and I have a glass of red wine that I am too stupid to spell…The band reminds me that I know nothing—it sounds like they’re unraveling melodies like biologists unravel DNA. Writing may not always be stable or always pay the bills, but if you’re doing it right, it can bring you to beautiful places for “research.” I realized early on that I ought to write about what I care about, and consequently my novel is about a half-Romani (Gypsy) dancer and fortune teller working at a Parisian circus and her strange journey to Nazi hunting. It’s mostly set in the 1940’s and 1920’s, and while I can’t go back in time, I can absolutely go to Paris. I had just finished a very gratifying Writing and Yoga Retreat, as both a participant and a visiting professor, with the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at the Château de Verderonne in Picardy, France. My brain was ticking over with ideas for the novel, and Geoffrey, the cab driver with the long blond ponytail and a penchant for dance music, was bringing me to Paris for five days of research. I had only one plan: going to the same bar single every night, L’atelier Charonne, where there’s Jazz Manouche at 9 p.m. every evening. Manouche is the name of a Gypsy clan prominent in France, and the French Jazz movement was spearheaded by revolutionary Manouche musician Django Reinhardt, whose black and white portrait hangs on L’atelier Charonne’s wall. And this is where I would write, every night, lit by candles, music, and the ridiculously beautiful bar staff. Writing about my Romani heritage is both an act of pleasure and an act of necessity. Honoring and rediscovering my culture’s beliefs, history, music, food, dance, art, and fashion (and fashion politics) feels like self-love. But there is also the nervous need to explain—not just to explain myself or this part of my family’s culture, but to explain the current human rights crisis. Expressing this pain feels like life or death. The Romani people are an ethnic group originating in India around the 11th century C.E., and since the early Roma left home, they have endured persecution so severe that it gave rise to Roma’s traditional nomadism. All over the world (including the U.S.A.), Roma are illegally deported, forced into camps with poor sanitation and shoddy shelters, segregated in schools, forcibly sterilized, banned from shops and places of work, targeted by hate crimes, human trafficking, and slavery. And this violent prejudice and persecution has been raging for centuries, many people only know of Roma through stereotypes or misrepresentations (like reality TV).

So many people miss out on the rich, vibrant, and productive cultures across the many Romani clans and groups. Even the word “Gypsy,” an inaccurate term at best and an ethnic slur at worst, is charged with harmful stereotypes ranging from the depraved criminal to the seductive free-spirit. Gadjé, people outside the Romani culture, appropriate the word to mean whatever they like, or use it to name or brand to evoke some bohemian, racy, or exotic je ne sais quoi often without realizing that it’s more or less the equivalent to calling your kid, pet, or business “Gook,” “Injun,” or “Spic.” Many Roma, however, exercise their right to reclaim “Gypsy” as an act of linguistic empowerment, custom, or pure and simple preference. This is why, if you aren’t of Romani descent, it’s best to use the word “Roma” instead of “Gypsy” and avoid using its variants like “gypped,” and it’s always worth anyone’s while to brush up on cultural appropriation v. cultural exchange. There aren’t many bars in Paris that play authentic Romani music, and France has a love-hate relationship with Roma that is really mostly hate. Historically, France has been happy to revere Django Reinhardt, the Manouche Jazz genius, as a French treasure, but less pleased to let his Romani brethren work and live in the country with equal rights. Recently, Darius, a Romani boy in Paris was beaten into a coma by French “vigilante” teens who suspected the boy of petty theft. French politicians, like Gilles Bourdouleix, make public statements that Hitler didn’t kill enough Gypsies and that Gypsies belong in concentration camps—comments that manage to be revolting sneers at the Romani Holocaust and a calls to arms for neo-Nazis across Europe. But if the Gypsies are on-stage entertaining the masses, outsiders will tolerate it, even enjoy it. And still, it’s complicated. One of my evenings at L’AteIier Charonne, I was having a drink with a dear friend from college who’s living in Paris and chatting about Jazz Manouche, and granted I’m no expert, but a thin, sharp-nosed Frenchman leans over and says in overly-annunciated English, “These are French classics. You may not know that if you’re not French.” Instead of pointing to the banner that said Jazz Manouche & Tzigane and saying, “No, they are Gypsy classics that you, sir, are appropriating!” I just opened and closed my mouth, silenced by rage, and looked away. But mostly, L’atelier Charonne was not so complicated. Mostly, it was overwhelmingly lovely. The first night I sat next to a French-Brazilian guy, as handsome as that sounds, who asked me about why I was there. It’s not exactly a tourist destination. When I explained my project and my ethnicity, he didn’t launch into a racist diatribe, didn’t try to console me, and didn’t say “Me, too! I’m a Gypsy at heart because I’m such a free spirit!” or any other terrible thing (as has happened to me many times before). Instead, he told me about his hometown, Fontainebleau, which he shares with Django Reinhardt, and pointed to the Rromanes script on my tattoo and said, “You’re a beautiful Roma woman.” And the staff, who all seemed to be superfluously attractive hip intellectuals, were so kind even though my French is so atrocious that I can barely ask for a glass of wine, even when I’m trying pretty hard. I will blame this on my latent New England mill town accent. The charming Benoit slipped me an extra glass of red, a woman so pretty she was unnerving chatted with me about bangles, and a tall gentleman who reminded me of a pale Prince (the artist formerly known as) passed over a free dish of olives marinated in rosemary and oil. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote till my notebook was nearly full in less than a week. Mostly, I worked on my novel, which has a few scenes in a Gypsy bar in Paris, but I also made note of all the goings-on. 8/20/14--An old woman smokes outside, wearing a black bandana with white skulls on it. Actually, the old woman is actually an old man but I like her better as a woman. The music before felt like a Jimi Hendrix glaze, but now the song is spooky like a cheerful haunted house. The old man has noticed me watching and makes romantic overtures through the window with his eyebrows. I really do need to try harder on my French. Even the sweet guy, Benoit, who got me a drink is encouraging me to try. It seems everyone in this city is ostentatiously gorgeous, but maybe that’s how everyone looks when you’re in Paris and a little desperate. Some nights, I came alone, and others I came with friends.8/21/14—Manouche Jazz with Antonia, Norma, Rita, and Elissa. A Romani man plays the steel string guitar, wearing big black Liz Taylor sunglasses, gold bracelets on his right wrist, a chunky carnelian and onyx bracelet on his left wrist, and lots of gold rings on both hands. The other Rom also plays the steel-stringed guitar and wears burnished Sienna leather shoes with stamped details, and orange watch with four crystals studding the face like cardinal directions, and a gold chain necklace. He scats along with the melody, “doot doo dee doo da.” They’re both in their fifties—maybe older but they don’t look it. There’s a younger man, too, tall and thin in crisp slacks and a crisp shirt who is pale and doesn’t look Romani to me, but I could be wrong. The tune comes to crescendo and makes me think of the Renaissance and women with long necks in paintings who had affairs with their painters. Norma, who was recently featured in VIDA’s “Twenty ‘Gypsy’ Women You Should Be Reading,” struck up a conversation with the band after their outstanding performance. She and Elissa are fluent in French, and Rita and Antonia speak it well too, so I sat quietly writing until someone would lean over and catch me up. It turned out that the performers were none other than Christophe Astolfi and the brothers Boulou and Elios Ferré. Boulou and Elios are renowned Romani Jazz musicians who have played with Charlie Parker and his ilk and are part of the illustriously musical Ferré family, and Astolfi is a well-known Sicilian musician trained in French and Italian music. Norma is related to another Romani family well-known for their musical talent in Hungary, the Lakatos family, and of course they knew her clan. They were all so friendly and generous with their time and stories. When we asked them their favorite bar for Romani music in the city, they said, “Here!”8/23/14—The magical, wonderful, powerful, Grandma Romani singer performs tonight. While everyone in the audience always appreciates and enjoys the performances, she brings the crowd to life, all sequins, smiles, and tambourine—she’s clapping, laughing, and dragging men up out of their seats to dance on stage, and teasing everyone by making them sing into the mic. Although she seems younger, she reminds me of my grandmother. She feels like the essential Romani woman—timelessly beautiful and strong. I am one foot in and one foot out of that stream. Some little blond woman got up to dance and no one has danced all week. That’s how alive this singer is. The Moreno Orchestra. I’m here alone, but I bought a CD from her and had only enough French to say, “Combien? D’accord. Je suis Roma! Oui! I’m sorry my French is terrible. I don’t know what you said. You are beautiful. You sing so beautifully.Trèsbelle. Merci! Bonne soirée!” I had actually been to the bar the year before, almost on accident, with my husband and our friends Seán and Jen from his home-country, Ireland, and because the Romani Grandmother was performing that night, I wanted to come back so badly that next summer that I made sure that this time I would stay no more than a six minute walk away so I could go every night if I wished. And I did. In a city where I will see “Kill Roma” scrawled inside a public toilet on a regular basis, it meant a great deal to me to sit among people, Roma and gadjé alike, and enjoy beautiful music from a beautiful culture from the comfort of my barstool for that one week that I was a regular at L’atelier Charonne. It felt like I had a community, the kind that, even if I excavated, I could not find in America. Now, I will write, and soon, hopefully, I will return.